← The mindbodygreen Podcast
The mindbodygreen Podcast
638: The science of flourishing & how to give life meaning | Daniel Coyle
00:56:53
Coyle is the bestselling author of The Culture Code and The Talent Code, who just released his latest book, Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment. After spending decades studying elite performers, Navy SEALs, championship sports teams, and top business leaders, Coyle had climbed to the mountaintop of success research only to realize it wasn’t what he thought it would be. Now, he focuses his work trying to answer the question: What actually makes a life worth living?
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Welcome to the MyBodyGreen podcast. I'm Jason Wakab, founder and co CEO of MyBodyGreen and your host.
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Today's guest is Daniel Coyle, bestselling author of the Culture Code and the Talent Code, who just released his latest book, the Art of Building, Meaning joy and fulfillment. After spending decades studying elite performers, Navy Seals, championship sports teams and top business leaders, Coyle had climbed to the mountaintop of success research. But when his parents passed away, he found himself asking a different question. What actually makes a life worth living? The answer wasn't what he expected. It wasn't individual achievement, willpower, or personal optimization. It was something we can't do alone. In today's show, we explore why flourishing requires other people and can't happen in isolation, and why broadening our attention and relating to others changes everything. He shares some surprising examples we can all glean something from. We also discuss why frequency beats intensity when it comes to meaningful connection, the concept of friction boosting and how rituals animate us rather than automate us. It's not about adding more to your to do list. It's about discovering that the path to meaning runs directly through other people. Let's dive in foreign. So at the highest level, what is a meaningful life? What does that look like to you?
- [02:57]
C
Yeah, right. Right now, that's the question that sent me on this five year journey. That's exactly it. Right. I was kind of in between things. My parents had died. I've spent my life studying performers, super top performers. And I, I knew it wasn't that. I knew it wasn't just success. Right. I'd been to the mountaintop and I started looking in these valleys, started looking in places that had this. When we really look at the definition of flourishing, it's joyful, meaningful growth, shared. Shared. And that key word is that. Right? It's. It's a thriving community. That's where flourishing happens. That's the vehicle for it. It happens sort of in and through community. And so for this, you know, as I looked at thriving, I thought originally at flourishing, I thought originally I'd find maybe there's some individuals doing. It turns out you can't do it alone. Like we require other people to bring out the best version of ourselves. And so what I found over and over again, sort of like a fingerprint, were these groups of people deeply rooted in meaning, doing these messy aspirational projects together. Like it was messy. It wasn't people who had sort of. I'd sort of gone into it thinking, oh, these are people who have like the tidy answers. Like they will have figured it out. Right. And that was kind of my assumption. But, but when I got to these places, when I got to these towns, when I got to these businesses, when I got to these communities, what I found were people who were much more living into the question in a messy, very present and very kind of ultimately alive way. Like they were kind of, they were really good at kind of creating a sense of aliveness. And as a journalist, that ended up being like almost a challenge because I'd go to these places and I wouldn't want to leave. It's like, this is great, you know, it's fun to be here.
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A
What's the place? Give us the place you went to and you didn't want to leave.
- [04:46]
C
Zingerman. Zingerman's, it's a little deli and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Some of your listeners might have been there. It's sort of started as a One. One house. They wanted to build a great Reuben sandwich. Celebrate Reuben sandwich. And it grew into this community of businesses that is now a $90 million community of businesses that. That encompasses all sorts of things. You know, a catalog and a travel business and a creamery. And I was. I was kind of hanging out with. It had a way of like putting my own life in perspective, actually. That's what I liked about it. It created meaning. And one example of that was I was asking their co founder, his name's Ari Weinswag. I was asking him why they had, you know, I was asking. I said, is, isn't it surreal, Ari, he'd grown up as a dishwasher. He started as a dishwasher, and now he's the co founder of this company. And I said, isn't it surreal that like, you were a dishwasher? Does this ever strike you as just like, crazy and surreal that you're now sort of this, you know, co CEO of this $90 million community of thriving businesses? And he looks at me and he goes, little Danny Coyle, growing up in Alaska, wanting to be a writer. Like, how surreal is that? So in that moment, like, that just kind of knocked me out because that was my story. And I shared that with him. He had, of course, asked me. And this idea that it's all kind of surreal, especially when you get into. Which means sort of. It's all kind of surprising. And the level of growth that can happen is always kind of stunning when you look back at it. And so those places kind of. They were able to create that moment of kind of spacious connection, deep connection that I found myself craving as a human being. I think we're all kind of craving some of that.
- [06:29]
A
So if we separate this into, say, the personal and the collective. Let's start with the personal. What's the recipe there for meaning fulfillment? What have you found? Whether it's super quote, unquote, top performers, as you mentioned, or everyday people who just seem to have figured it out, if you will, before we segue to the community. Because you can't just take. You also can't take someone who's just a total drag lost and throw the. You know, I think part of the community is the magic of each individual. But what's your take on the. On the. The personal?
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C
Yeah, on the personal. This sort of takes place in kind of the ways in which we pay attention. Right. On the personal side, where this stuff resonates is in openness, in the ability to shift your attention system. And we actually have two Attention systems as the. The book gets into, we have task attention that's pretty narrow, and we have broad attention that is really relational. And on a personal level, what this. These communities require, what this process requires is to put it really simple kind of openness. It requires the kind of relational attention that lets you connect to something bigger. You have to be open to that. You have to have some space between your ears where you can say, hey, I'm not the only story here. Hey, I'm connecting to something bigger. Whether it's that bakery, whether it's the story from your past, whether it's the place you are, the neighborhood you are, that becomes the vehicle to connect to the collective. But without that openness, when you talk about people that are kind of, you know, that are. That are a drag, who are maybe in the drag is because they're kind of shut down and closed. But I guess the thing that I learned is that there really is. It's not the sort of line between being open and closed is much, much finer. And, And. And it is sort of a switch that you can flip. The science of that is interesting because it is these attention systems in our head are sort of competing all the time to see who's in charge. And so when we are focused on something narrow and seeing the world through this narrow spotlight where we're trying to control, can very quickly flip to the other, which is relational attention, open, broad. I remember talking to a baseball coach who's a. Happens to be the coach of the Chicago Cubs, Craig Counsel. We were do some work with the Cleveland Guardians. We were interviewing him for our managerial position, and the. The question came up, hey, being a manager is pretty lonely. What do you do when you're down and you're feeling really isolated? And he thought for a second, he said, I look around for somebody to help. Somebody, somebody. I just. Just rookie struggling with something. Clubhouse guy who needs me to help pick up towels. I look around for somebody to help. That was really a really small thing, but a deeply profound thing because in that moment, he's sort of letting go of himself, disappearing a little bit, right? And losing himself. And he's shifting his attention from tact to relational. He's opening himself up a little bit. And that's the personal. On the personal side, that's the move that I saw over and over again. I saw people using ritual to do that. You know, I met a guy at Harvard Divinity School who developed a. A little routine he would do when he brushed his teeth, which is, hey, I just tell myself every Day is full of joy and suffering and today is no different. Like almost just a little mantra, nothing big, right? It's not a big deal, it takes two seconds. And these grounding practices that they would use at Zingerman's, they teach people to S B A, stop, breathe, appreciate. They have actually, they have you check your energy levels, they sort of say, you got physical energy, you've got emotional energy, but you've got vibe, your vibrational energy, like what are you sending into the room. So all of these practices add up to kind of a consistent way to ground yourself out of this kind of narrow, information based, fast, fragmented, get things done. Feeling that we in the modern world all live in. Like we all live in that sped up place where we've got to keep going. We've, we got these things in our pockets that focus us and we, we're, we're besieged by these big companies that are constantly trying to grab our narrow attention. And so in that environment, which is a pretty unique environment in the history of the planet, like we're the first people to like live in that crazy whirlpool. The ability to say, hold, hold up, hold up. That's not the only thing. I don't need to lose myself in the chase, in the hunt. I can actually stop and, you know, maybe help somebody or maybe stop, breathe and appreciate or whatever that might be to get you out of that narrow beam and into that open attentional state that allows you to connect.
- [11:26]
A
It's fascinating. And I think there's this tension, you know, we all have a lot to do, we're busy, you know, we work, we've got families, we've got obligations, and at the same time, you know, we're trying to become more aware, more connected, more conscious. And I want to touch on rituals, I view rituals because then the question invariably becomes, well, okay, but I'm busy. Tell me what I can do, what can I integrate into my life tomorrow? And in my view, the rituals, shared meals, silence. Can we talk about rituals, habits, routines when it comes to flourishing, what you've done here on a personal level, I love that.
- [12:06]
C
Yeah, no, it's true, it's true. Rituals are super powerful. And it's kind of interesting when you stop and think about why they're powerful. Because in the world we live in now, it's kind of a habity world. Like get this habit, get that habit. And habits are great, they're like indispensable. But when you really look into how they work, they work by automating us. So we're not thinking about it. And rituals do the opposite. They animate us. They, like, they. You light the candle, you stop, you do that moment of silence. That is not automating anything, actually. It's sort of an awakening. I call it in the book. I call it an awakening cue, right? It's a little cue to just be like, hey, there's more here. There's, you know, shift your attention to something bigger. So rituals end up being something I see all the time in these flourishing communities. And I think ritual as a word has come to take on this kind of solemnity, spiritual sort of feeling. And that's true. That's part of what it is, for sure. But you can also think of it as just anything that's not. That doesn't have a. A definite positive outcome. Any. Anything that's just sort of a music festival is. Is a ritual for all the people that go to it. Doing kind of big, you know, just hanging out and doing nothing with your friends is. Is a ritual. Anything that you're kind of relaxing your attention and being in that space with people. And for me, I mean, the one sort of ritual that I've done just lately is just like. I sort of think of it as like, the daily rando thing. Like, I reach out to a friend or an acquaintance, and last week it was my old neighbor Kyle, who I used to play football with. And I came across, like, we had written down stats from our games when we were 10 years old, and I took a picture of it and I sent it to him, and we chatted on the phone for like 10 minutes. I hadn't talked to Kyle in 10 years. It, like, it made my day. Like, I. I had a blast. Like, reconnecting to that was so fun. And just that daily rando reach out, I find it challenging to do because it feels like I'm wasting time. And I have 50 better things that do. And there's no outcome. There's no positive output that I get from it. But there's. On another level, there's this very deep positive output that I get from it. And another sort of one that I've taken on a little bit is kind of friction boosting. I think of it like, there's a great story Kurt Vonnegut told, and stop me if you've heard this story, but he. He was going to the drugstore in the town where he lived, and he went and bought one envelope. And the woman behind the counter was like, I've got a pack of 50. Like, you come here and buy One envelope all the time. Like, I have 50. Would you like that? And he goes, absolutely not. On my walk down here, I'm going to make faces at the babies in the strollers. I'm going to give a thumbs up to the fireman as he drives by. And I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, wave to the milkman. Like, I, I do not want 50 envelopes. I want one envelope. Because, you know, he's kind of like in the friction is the good stuff, right? And in the friction is the little connections of community that, that light him up. And there's a ton of like, you know, science that shows when it comes to fulfillment, happiness, energy, community, small and frequent beats, rare and intense. Like, if you want meaning, don't climb Mount Fuji. Like, go make faces at the babies that are in strollers on your street. Like, frequency will make you way more connected and fulfilled than intensity.
- [15:40]
A
Well, when I think about that example, I think of urban, I think walkability, I think subways, buses, commutes. Anything that is not just being an individual in one vehicle going back and forth. I think the more human touch points, the better on a daily basis. Am I interpreting that's correct?
- [16:08]
C
100%. I mean, collisions would be the word that, you know, some social scientists would use, right? Just, God, bounce around, like, be a billiard ball and see what happens and create spaces where that happens. You know, some of the people that are most like, most intentional about creating those spaces are, you know, people in business. Actually, they're quite good at it. People at Pixar and, you know, Google's designing their lunch line so that it's not too fast. They want people to linger, right? And Pixar is super intentional about the space where people eat because they don't want. And they serve great food. They don't want people going off campus. They want the noodles in the pot. You know, that's kind of the metaphor for it where it's like there's a confined space and people are kind of bounce energized and bouncing off each other and you just don't know what's going to emerge from that. And we're terrible at predicting how much we like that, by the way. Like, we always think we're gonna, we're always gonna think it's gonna stink. But the studies show, like, we like it way more than we think we do.
- [17:06]
A
You know, intuitively it makes sense, personally speaking. So I live in a neighborhood in Miami called Coconut Grove. Very, very walkable. Our office is here. We live Here. And I'm very routine driven. I go to the same gym every day, I have my same route to the office, I go for a walk, I run into people all the time. And many of those, I would say the lion's share of those people are people I don't have close relationships with. But I know them, some of them I know their names, some of them I don't. But you know, you say hello, you maybe exchange a few words and you move on. And to me that's gold. Even though these aren't quote unquote like me. We don't like stop and necessarily talk about, you know, the problems we're facing at home or what have you. It's just, hey, how's it going? Good to see you.
- [17:53]
C
I know we're, but we're pre wired for it. It's like all of the dystopian stuff that we sort of see and read and feel and the world speeding up and fragment and people being so polarized. It's like that is true. There's definitely, there's definitely that. And when, when something flips and we are ready to connect, like we have part of our brains and part of our spirits, if we want to call it that, that are just like poised, waiting for that opportunity to sort of come forth and enjoy other people's company.
- [18:22]
A
Well, you mentioned dystopian and I have to go to your story of the Chilean miners because that story is I think probably would be certainly one of my worst nightmares and probably a lot of our listeners. But I'll let you tell the story and talk about some of the lessons.
- [18:37]
C
Yeah, I mean if you had to trade places with anybody on the planet ever, these guys would not be at the top of the list. I mean there are 33 of them sort of hard bitten roughneck miners at the. Trapped in a, in a, it's called a refugio little room, you know, a couple thousand people over the surface. Not much hope or rescue. It's hot for the first like hour or so. It's complete chaos. Lord of the Flies. People are eating the little bit of food that's there and then you flash forward and it turns out that when they were finally contacted, they lowered a microphone down the hole and the miners sang a song together and they, they had formed. The first question they asked was about a truck driver who they thought maybe had been injured by the, by the collapse. And it turned out the truck driver had escaped. So these guys were almost literally in a situation that most of us would describe as hell. And the first time they're contacted after 16 days, they are singing. And after having no food, singing and asking about other people. So how did they do that? You know? And the answer to that at first was assumed to be, well, they had great leaders. There was a great leader down there who kind of whipped him into shape. And they had a plan and they followed the plan. But it turns out that wasn't true. It turns out what happened was that they sort of circled up and sort of surrendered to each other. The first, their old stern boss, his name was Luis Urzua, he had a white helmet on. They're circled up, they don't know what to do. They're realizing they're really in it now. And he walks to the center of the circle, he takes off his white helmet and he says, there are no bosses and no employees anymore, period. And then somebody else notices. They count heads. There's 33 of them. And someone else, they happen to be Christian, Catholic. And they said, well, 33, that's the same age that Jesus was when he died. That's meaningful too. And they started creating these. And it is, you know, these are symbolic gestures. These are kind of almost little stories they're telling themselves, right? But they're all pausing, they're circled up, they're sensing something bigger than themselves. And from that moment they start to sort of self organize. They develop some little rituals around mealtime. They delve some rituals around being guardian angels for each other, where they'd watch each other when they slept and help them if they needed help. They started kind of a confession thing where they would confess to any sort of transgressions they had, they had, had. They built like an entire. They played games, they had like games with. They would take the reflectors and break them and turn them into playing chips and. And so it was not a leader telling people what to do. It was this bottom up sense of we are, we're having, we're going to have this moment of responsive stillness. We're going to switch from kind of this narrow focus to something bigger, connect to something bigger. And we're going to develop these rituals that we're going to do together. And that's what helped them survive. And in all the places that I visited, I found kind of that same heartbeat, like they're all in their own way. Whether it's Zingerman's, whether it's this little town in Vermont that develops all these Olympians, they're all having these moments of deep connection, deep meaningful connection sort of. And then they're doing these kind of self organizing explorations together. And that I think, ends up being kind of the framework or the heartbeat of what flourishing is. It's a living thing. It's not, it's not a machine, it's not an output, it's not a game that you can figure out the rules to, but it's a process, a lived process where you are inhaling, stopping, inhaling that meaning, figuring out what you're about, getting energy and connection from that and then exploring and growing in ways that challenge you and that are, that are, that are difficult, but that end up growing everyone in the group.
- [22:30]
A
What role do you think faith plays here?
- [22:32]
C
I think it's, I think it's, it depends what we mean by faith. If faith we mean we're going to step into a relationship with something bigger, a mystery. And I would say that's a pretty good way to think about it. I'm going to kind of step into a mystery that I do not understand, that I do not understand. And that could be the universe, that could be nature. There's a lot of things bigger than us that are not named God or don't have a religion associated with them. But stepping through that, stepping into uncertainty with others, I think is that pattern that we see over and over again. Where they are, where they're being vulnerable, they're trusting in what's going to happen. And if you had to kind of distill the word community down to its essence, I think you could probably end up with a phrase that's something like love your neighbor. Like, if you had to really distill it to three words, I think you'd probably come up with some words that are sort of like that. And that's what these places are really good at, at doing and are really focused on to say, you know, get out of the self and kind of like that baseball coach. Like, look for one small thing you can do to connect you. And so it does require, if faith is a leap, it requires a leap to do that. It is not to say, I'm going to love my neighbor. I don't know that he's going to help me back. I don't know that she's going to see what I do, but it, it is. There's an act of faith at the, at the very core of it.
- [24:04]
A
And going back to this town in Vermont that produces Olympians, let's talk about that. We've got the Olympics here.
- [24:10]
C
Yeah, I know. Kind of crazy, right? Town of 3,000 people, 11 Olympians. I think now. And some of them even, I mean you'd expect winter ones naturally, like it's Vermont, but they've got a rower, I think, and an 800 meter runner. So it's not just that they had this great thing happen there, which didn't sound like a great at the time, but I think now we sort of understand that overbearing parents can sometimes squash ambition and joy. And back in the, in the 50s and 60s, this town had like the ultimate tiger dad who raised two Olympians, both of whom were like kind of miserable and everybody could see it. So they had this beautiful, I mean what's called the, the via negativa. Like knowing what not to do is really important in life, right? Knowing how not to do it. So the whole town gets this PhD in how not to parent. And as a result they kind of stepped away from that kind of overbearing. And this guy was really took the cake. Like he would, he would wax the skis, he would design their training regimen. He had them doing laps around town with backpacks full of rocks. I mean you really wacko. But so they got this PhD level class and how not how not to do it. And as a result, the town kind of, you know, was able to self organize. They had, you know, days when the school shuts and everybody goes, everybody goes skiing. There were these relationships among the athletes that were incredibly motivating and powerful where they, they talk about. One of them was about to quit and he got a postcard from one of his competitors in town, said, hey, I see you. Keep going, you can do it. And he's like, that just changed. That little postcard like kept me going and he ends up going to the Olympics. And so they have something called the Norwich Daisy chain, which is, it's kind of a pay it forward and the way it was described. There's a woman who wrote an entire wonderful book about Norwich and she talked about it was Julia Crouch, I think wrote the book. But she, she talks about how in Norwich parenting kids of other families is the same as parenting your own kids. Like they, they really have a, an ethos where you treat other. Every kid kind of like they were your own kid. And that resonated too, that it's kind of that same like giving neighbor thing that you see in all these flourishing places. Which sounds, you know, again, it sounds sort of pie in the sky or, you know, Pollyanna. Ish.
- [26:43]
B
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- [27:12]
A
Yeah, it feels like very. Like It's a Wonderful Life. I think, you know, Jimmy Stewart's about to pop out of the book any moment and you know, we're all.
- [27:20]
C
I know it's crazy and it's like, it's, it's fun, it's strange that it's sort of real, but it's also, I. We should probably emphasize that it's. It's not with. It's not seashells and balloons. Like it's, it's kind of annoying to be in community at times. And some of these places and Zingerman's will tell you this and all the places that I visited were not without their, their friction, their difficulty. They're choosing this type of. Of of difficulty. But you know, as one of my grown kids told me the other day, annoyance is the price of community. And to expect and lean into that annoyance and to also realize that we all can be pretty annoying sometimes to. I'm sure that. I'm sure that I am. I'm. I'm sure that. To accept that because communities are annoying and transcendent. Like both of those things are true.
- [28:10]
A
On the subject of annoyance. I think most Parisians are annoyed with Americans and you talk about a disconnected Paris. The book that kind of reinvented himself. Could you speak to that example?
- [28:21]
C
Yeah, this neighborhood, kind of a classic Paris neighborhood, Mont Rouge. And for years people were. It's pretty typical. Like it's Paris. They're kind of snobby and disconnected and into their. Everybody's got their nose buried in a phone. And there was a retired journalist there, Patrick Bernard, and he kind of got obsessed with the idea that like I should do an experiment. He was kind of a curious dude. And the experiment was I'm going to put a really long table in the middle of the street. I'm going to close the street, put a 800 foot long table and invite everybody in the neighborhood to come out. Everybody come out. Will everyone come out? And everyone thought in, in. In Paris, if you, if you are kind of naive, they call you a teddy bear kisser, a bisonur, a teddy bear kisser. They're like, you're a, you're a teddy bear kisser. That's just naive. Everybody, a lot of people did show up, potluck. Everyone had a blast. And then, and there's music and there's celebrating and the whole town is there. And then he does kind of a clever thing. He says, you guys, we're going to set up some interest groups here. If you're interested in bicycles, here's where you sign up. If you're interested in pets, here's where you sign up. If you're interested in museums, here's where you sign up. And so people started to self organize into those. And he said a couple rules in these interest groups. No politics. Can't bring politics and negativity into them. And you have to gather around a joy device. You have to gather around food or drink. Like those are the only rules. And they also rules in size. I think they're seven or eight, 10 people in each one. So small groups, joy device, no negativity. And this thing has taken on this incredible life of its own where now these, these groups are sort of, they have a ton of agency. They're inventing new programs for the city. When there's a woman there who broke her wrist and there were like 15 people who contacted her and she said, life feels like I'm in a village. It feels like I'm in a village now. And so the lessons of that are, I think first that it's closer than we think because the way we're pre wired for this, because there aren't too many things in life that you can say, oh, you can kind of flip a switch, but our brains tend to happen to be one of those things. And the other lesson is it's kind of about design. What Patrick did there was sort of create these spaces, these channels for people to collide and bump into each other and some kind sense of direction. And then he let people free to do however they wanted. It wasn't like you need to do this. It was like do whatever you want, organize however you want. So high agency, high sense of, of, of. You can't go here, you know, sort of like in the, in the Norwich town. Like you cannot bring the politics in here. You have to stay in this channel. So a beautiful bit of design. And I think it kind of gives us a possibility and an insight into. I think those spaces, they're always repeating those same factors. They've got some horizon, they've got some constraint and they've got a ton of agency to give you a flow.
- [31:17]
A
It reminds me years ago I read a book, it's killing Me, it's escaping which. Which book it was. But there was a chapter around mega churches, and the thesis was the secret of the megachurch wasn't, you know, the. The pastor or the, you know, the big Sunday sermon. It was the small groups. And it reminded me of what you said where, you know, they, they. They got together around shared interests, they had agency. And it was these small groups that met throughout the week, and there were lots of them that was the glue to the megachurch. Not necessarily this, you know, enthusiastic, great pastor sermon who showed up every Sunday to speak to thousands of people. These small groups that was. Drove everything.
- [32:11]
C
I love that. And then what happens in a small group? Well, you're seen, you're heard, you have an opportunity to contribute. You have this sense of energy and connection and responsibility, accountability to each other. Small groups are like, what's that old saying, like, never doubt that a small, determined group of people that can change the world. That's the only thing that ever has. There's a tight of interaction that happens there that is. That is super special. And that happens as a result of design. Like, you know, one of the folks I met in the book was. His name was Peter Block. He's like one of the best at creating these moments, these meaningful connection, cohesion, energy, moments of great presence. And his method is just absolutely simple. It's like, get in small groups with people, you know, the least, right. Get close. He likes people to sit. No tables between you. Get close. Sit close. And then he gives you a question to explore. And the questions are always simple, too. They're like, why does being here matter to you? That's one. Like, why does being on this podcast matter to you right now? Let's talk about it. And then he gives them a time constraint. We're not going to talk about it for an hour. You got 10 minutes.
- [33:21]
A
All right?
- [33:22]
C
And we're going to move on to the next thing. And it, like, as he says, what happens in those groups is people are nervous and they resist for a while, and then they fall in love with each other. And it's, you know, we often think that in order to create trusting relationships, like, we need to, you know, build up trust before we can be vulnerable. But as this shows, like, we've got it backwards. It's. It's moments of shared vulnerability that actually create relationships. And so designing moments that create that shared vulnerability, like Peter does. Get close. Talk about this thing that. Matt, don't give me your opinion on something. Opinions, everybody's got opinions. That doesn't get Us anywhere. Don't give me any facts or information, like, tell me, meaning, let's talk about meaningfulness, like, how did you get here? What matters to you? Those are the questions that bring people alive.
- [34:12]
A
And my guess would be, in these communities, people are happier, they're healthier, they're living longer. Crime is probably low. Like, there. There are multiple benefits.
- [34:25]
C
Totally. Right. It's. It is. It is about, you know, that connection and cohesion that you get, and you get all these kind of extra benefits that we. We typically tend to think of, you know, community as a noun, like it's a. That it's a thing. But I think what these places show is that it's actually a verb. Right. It's actually this. This communitying that they are doing is. Has got all these other benefits that. That can accrue that are never permanent. We sometimes think of like, oh, these communities are fixed, but no community's ever fixed. Like, they're living things.
- [35:04]
A
Well, you mentioned fix. In my view, you should be on speed dial for every mayor in America who's learning, who's trying to turn their city around.
- [35:15]
C
And it can happen, right? It can happen.
- [35:17]
A
But is that. Is it. In all seriousness, is. Do you work with municipalities, with cities, with mayors? Because it might. If I'm stepping into a job in a city and we've got some issues to work through, this seems like something that is worthwhile.
- [35:34]
C
There's people that are way better than I am at doing this. But the. The thing that I've worked with that is most like a city is like, professional sports teams. Those are ones that I've seen some of these things, these. These outfits that are trying to. Trying to turn it around. Right? Trying to build systems and have their. Have their people. A lot of sports teams are kind of like a school system. Like, we're trying to. Trying to develop ability and capacity and have people learn these curriculums and be good citizens and be good teammates.
- [36:03]
A
Let's talk about an organization with. You've worked with there and, you know, what was an issue and how you came in and worked with them and what that looked like.
- [36:11]
C
Yeah, no, it's fun. The Cleveland Guardians, I've always been in love with baseball. Was, you know, convinced I was going to be the first major leaguer out of Alaska that ever lived. And I was. Couldn't. Turned out I wasn't good enough. Shocker. But I did write a book about how talent develops. And so one day in 2013, I got a call from the Cleveland. They were the Indians at the Time. They're the Guardians now, and they were interested in. They can't buy talent. They have one of the lowest budgets in sports. Dodgers, I think, spend $400 million a year, and guardians spend less than 100. So it's not a fair fight. So they can't sign talent, so they have to grow it. So up to that time in 2013, the Guardians had Moneyballed their way to the. To the top. They had Moneyball actually started in Cleveland. Little footnote, the Jonah Hill character from the movie was originally working for Cleveland. But of course, like any business strategy that gets evened out pretty quickly, everybody's got the right algorithms and you can't compete with that. So I came along at a time where they were realizing, hey, if we do things like other teams, we are definitely going to lose. Like, we've got to grow talent, so how do we do that? And so that's where I got kind of involved in. How do we design better practice? How do we design? How do we help coaches develop? If we're going to have great players, we need great coaches. So let's backward go up the chain. So we started out by saying, we need great coaches, so let's bring in other great coaches to help teach them how to coach according to best principles. So we assembled. We had all these ideas that we're going to push on our coaches, right? Better practice ideas. And we assembled this All Star team. It was like Michael Phelps, his coach, and the guy who led Navy Seal Team 6 and an NFL coach, and they were like this all Star, and they're going to come in and help our coaches. We were all excited for it, and we had the session and, like, there was no. The needle didn't move. Like, none of the coaches changed. And the problem wasn't them. I mean, the problem was us. We didn't really understand what we were doing. We didn't really understand the ecosystem. It's very risky to change your coaching techniques. It's very risky to risk your relationships with players to say, hey, I think I need you to make this change. The players, you know, very high stakes. So we had somebody along. His name was Jay Hennessy. He had also worked in the Navy SEALs. And he said, you know, we did this thing one time where we just asked our instructors who the best instructor they ever had was, and what did that instructor do? And we thought, oh, let's try that. Instead of pushing, as said, here's the expertise. We're going to give you best practices. Here's what you should do. This Effectively allowed us to flip it and create these small group discussions. Two or three or four coaches, and the question is, who's the best coach you ever knew? What did they do? And all of a sudden it goes from there. The unwilling. Getting information pushed on them. All of a sudden it's flipped. And now they're sharing, like, these incredible stories about their development or about a way that they taught Corey Kluber how to throw a curveball, or all this stuff comes fountaining out. And then we're able to create what we call the model of excellence. And it captured what great coaching was, and it continues to be a framework to help guide. Guide coaching. But it wasn't a, like, strategy thing. It was an energy thing.
- [39:32]
A
Let's talk about that, because I think that's a hot topic these days. You know, coming off of Indiana's win over Miami in the college football championship, what, in your view, what does make for a great coach? What are those qualities? Let's talk about the model of excellence. Like, what have you found in your research and your experience?
- [39:53]
C
I mean, we could talk about it in terms of, like, these pillars where they. They need the knowledge, right?
- [39:57]
A
You.
- [39:57]
C
They need to know. They can't just be sort of, you know, great communicator without the knowledge. That is. That is definitely a pillar. Can they design a space where learning can happen? Can they intentionally design a space where learning can happen? And then can they run that space with that player connected? Those are like the three big areas. Do they have knowledge? Can they. Are they a good designer? And can they connect with a. And get them through that? And the thinking. If. Are you familiar with constraints? Led approach? They call it cla.
- [40:29]
A
Let's go through it.
- [40:30]
C
Yeah, constraints. It basically says that if you're teaching somebody how to do move their body, the best thing you can do. Actually, it's kind of poetic because the best thing you can do is let them self organize around an obstacle, which for me resonates with communities. The best communities happen when you self organize around an obstacle. Not to go down too much of a rabbit hole here, but the most inspiring community stories are often after a natural disaster. Right? All right, let's get together. Let's figure it out. You're in charge of food, I'm in charge of rescue, whatever that is. What constraints led approach. It's exactly the same principle brought to sports, which is, if I want you to hit a ball higher than you are, telling you how to move your body is not useful. Creating an obstacle in front of you like a screen and saying, hit the ball over that screen, don't hit it into the screen, hit it over the screen, you will self organize yourself to be able to do that better than I can ever teach you. And so designing those kind of spaces ends up being a really powerful learning technique. And all those spaces are essentially the same space, which is like, how can I thoughtfully identify what this player needs and then how can I create a space where he, the player can, on his own motivation and driven by himself, can do that over and over again? And I would say some of this is kind of context dependent, sports dependent. Baseball is a sport where moving your body by yourself is a really big part of it. Football is a sport, on the other hand, where maybe you need to have a little more of a repetition, do your job, different sort of a training technique. But if we're talking about pure athleticism, this idea of like the constraint and self organizing to get around it, if we reflect on our own life, I think most of us find. When, when did I learn the most? When did my learning velocity go way up? And it's not going to be when it was easy, you know, it's going to be when I played when I was 12 and I played in that league of 15 year olds and holy cow, did I get better, right? Because that constraint that, that pressure made me forced me in a way to respond and do things that I never could have done without it.
- [42:50]
A
Agreed. And I think there's a balance too. You know, I come from the old school mentality where there was also fear played. And in some ways, again, I'm speaking personally, fear sometimes sucked the joy out of play and I still got through it and perform, but I kind of lost the love along the way. And it's this balance, right? You know, you need to push to realize potential, but at the same time, once the joy or the love goes, it's, it's going to be a tough road. Or in your word, maybe not the most fulfilling road. You still may, you know, get to the top, win the gold medal, whatever. But it may feel pretty empty.
- [43:38]
C
I know, and we see that, right? With Olympic athletes. Depression, sad success stories, it's, it's almost a cliche. But so connecting to that joy and that meaning is actually an energy. You think of them as fuel tanks, right? Joy is kind of this renewable resource, if you will, like you can rediscover it and you can fall in love with reality again. That's one definition of joy that I love. When you're falling in love with reality again, like, that's joy. Fear is also a great high octane fuel source, but it kind of burns. It fries everything.
- [44:14]
A
Right.
- [44:15]
C
It's good. It can work for short periods of time like nothing else. Like, it's incredible. But long term, it's. It's kind of. It's kind of unstable.
- [44:24]
A
How do you. I'm curious what your personal view is on goals, because I. I hear a lot in just reflecting on our conversation. I hear about, you know, having an openness infusing spontaneity, being open to communication, like going with the flow, being positive, having faith. In some ways, almost the antithesis to someone who's very goal oriented, where this is what I got to do, this is what I'm going to achieve, and I'm going to do it and then move fear, moving on.
- [44:52]
C
Right, Right. No, I'm. What I'm describing sounds like Grateful Dead fan on the road. Like, just digging, digging the thing. Right?
- [44:58]
A
A huge Grateful Dead fan, so.
- [44:59]
C
Me too. Talk about a. I mean, that guy knows cooperation. That guy knows community. Like, freaking amazing. He just kept making communities his whole life.
- [45:10]
A
Mike, I could talk to you for that Grateful Dead for two hours in a different podcast, but we'll. I don't know if our audience would be interested in that, but, you know,
- [45:20]
C
that's great. No, I think the way to think about that goal conversation is a really good one, and I. I definitely feel it personally because it is really satisfying. It takes me back a little bit to our conversation about sort of narrow attention versus meaningful attention. And I think where I see it fail is where you've just got the goal for the goal sake, where you're sort of feeling like, when I get there, everything's going to be great and my life will be transformed. And you're relying on that goal to do that. Where I've seen it succeed is where the goal is serving. You almost can think of the narrow as serving the broad. Where it's like, I'm doing this, but I'm doing it because I have this deep joy. I'm learning how to, you know, play ping pong, but I'm doing it because I have this deep joy of playing with my kids, and they all play ping pong. And so I'm taking. That's. They're. They're fueling each other. The. The wide is fueling the narrow. And so looking for those connections between the narrow and the wide is. Ends up being, I think, a really helpful practice. Like, what relationships are connected to this goal, this narrow goal that I'm that I'm going after because, you know, relationships are living things, too, from my own point of view. I set out to try to, like, help the Guardians build a better batting practice. And I ended up with a, you know, relationships with a bunch of people there that I now consider, you know, really good friends. And we have, you know, some adventures together. And I never thought going out that I'd end up skydiving with Terry Francona in Arizona, which was probably a mistake on a bunch of levels. But, you know, these narrow things are connected to the relational ecosystem in which they're happening. And so to kind of keep yourself. I've heard people describe it as a yellow door. That's the way I talk about it in the book. Right. It's like keeping those yellow doors of relationship kind of open while you are kind of on your grind.
- [47:20]
A
I love that. And I want to talk about mindset. Also. You speak about Ellen Langer in the book, who we've had on the show. And we love specifically the time travel aging experiment, which is so good. Can you share that one?
- [47:35]
C
Oh, you bet. Yeah. She's something else, right? I mean, she's just. She's a treasure. She really is. She really is. You know, in typical fashion, she did an experiment that was unique. And that experiment was back in the 70s. She rented a monastery in rural New England and then retrofitted it. This is the kind of thing that makes you want to be a scientist, isn't it? Like, retrofitted it to be 20 years or 25 years prior to 1975, whenever she did the experiment. And so they put on, you know, all the. All the furnishings, all the media, all the, you know, the record player.
- [48:09]
A
The.
- [48:09]
C
The TV became. Instead of a color, was black and white. The programs on the TV, instead of being modern, were 20, 25 years old. And then they brought in some. She asked for volunteers, anybody in their 70s. And at the time, it was just men to come and take part in this experiment. She ran one control group where it was just. You just encouraged to remember what it was like to be young and enjoy your time in the house. And then the second group was encouraged. Your role is to live as if it was 20 years ago. That was the instruction. Your role is to live as if. And one of them had a cane. And for. And it took a little time for this to get going. And during this time, you can kind of picture, like, their narrow task, attention kind of broadening a little bit, connecting. Oh, there's Perry Cuomo. Oh, there's Johnny Unitis. Like all these, all these meaningful things that are, that are connected in their lives. And this group like came to life. Like they started. There was much more conversation, much more energy, much more laughing. They started to have little, little catchphrases, playful catchphrases among themselves. And when it came time to pick them up, one of the graduate students, one of Langer's graduate students had brought a football along and the old people grabbed the football and started playing touch football with it. And as Ellen said, like at the start of the experiment, no one would have thought that was possible. So, so where does that vitality, like we typically think of that as being, oh, those are great vibes or oh, that's just magical. Like what a, what a cool little thing. But when we think about it from the perspective of a designer, what she did there was design for presence. She designed for meaning. She removed all the narrow things they normally have to deal with and filled the space with, with resonant symbols and connections. And the connection itself just sort of grew in that space. And so I think the lesson of that and the challenge of that is like, how do we create those kinds of time traveling machines in our house or in our, in our space or in our work or with our family?
- [50:15]
A
It was just unbelievable. You know, this idea of full immersion. You know, we're not going to reminisce. We're getting the same magazines, same same TV shows, same everything from 20 years ago. And literally these guys became stronger, more flexible. They go from like walking in canes to like, we're playing touch football. Like unbelievable. I think of mindset and to your point, like the power of connection, like minded people in a controlled space in the same environment. I think the possibilities are just endless. And I also think, okay, what are the, what disastrous things have we also done to communities and how, you know, without going down that rabbit hole. But wow, what a, what a. I just, I just love that. The time travel aging experiment, so powerful.
- [51:02]
C
I know, I know. Bring it on.
- [51:04]
A
So in closing, in addition to picking up the book, which is incredible, such, such a fantastic read, where, where can our audience find you? What are you up to? Any words of wisdom you want to close with?
- [51:20]
C
Oh man, Words of wisdom. That's a high bar. High bar. Jason. No, find me@DanielCoyle.com There's a little link if they want to send a note. Usually get goes right into my email. Words of wisdom. I don't know, I guess the thing that the little catchphrase has been going through my, my head lately is like, drop the armor. Like, I sort of feel like when things are wrong, I walk around kind of all armored up and kind of ready. It's stiff and it's protective and it's useful in certain situations, but most of the time it just makes you clumsy, gets in the way. And so in these. In these, you know, in spaces where you're trying to create relationships, trying to grow the garden of your. Your life, like your. Your life, it looks like a game, but it's not a game. It's more of a garden. So those moments where you do that, tune into that and, you know, drop the armor and grow the relationships.
- [52:10]
A
And the real closing question. What's your all time favorite Grateful Dead show?
- [52:14]
C
Oh, my God. Okay, I'm gonna go. I gotta go with May 9th. I think it was 1981, Ithaca. They did a version of Franklin's Tower that was just unbelievable. And that's. That's the. That I'd say that show. I think we had good Jerry showing up at that show. How about yourself?
- [52:35]
A
You know, there's so many. I think I want to say there were the. Some of the Fillmore shows in 69, I think I want to say, like, February 69 were really good.
- [52:49]
C
I love.
- [52:50]
A
I think it was like five May. I think. So I go back to the tapes. I don't think in May. I think of like 5, 26, 73, or I think some of those shows. I think that was in Europe. The spring. 77, I thought was also great. Like some of the Barton hall shows you mentioned, like the Scarlet Fire. May, May 8 77, I want to. Or May. It was in May 77. 80s, not so much. 90s is when I started to first. My first dead show. 92. So. So many to choose from. But I was fortunate enough. We went. I dragged my wife. We were in LA to the sphere when they were there in July 24th with. With John Mayer. And it was just. I had been to a show since 94, I want to say. And I'm so glad I went because John Mayer was absolutely. I became a huge John Mayer fan and like Bobby Weir and then Mickey and the energy and it was just so tremendous.
- [53:55]
C
It was. Oh, same here. I had the same John Mayer, like, flip, you know, like complete flip.
- [54:03]
A
Yeah. I'm like, wow, now I'm a John Mayer fan. Like, I love this guy and the fact that he played with Bob and the respect and.
- [54:11]
C
But yeah, do you see the eulogy he gave for. For Bob?
- [54:16]
A
Read every word.
- [54:17]
C
So it's just. Just wonderful. It Seems like talk about growth, right? Talk about like John Mayer, man.
- [54:22]
A
That dude grows his line around something along the lines of like, I'll trust you. I. I know you. You say it's not over or something. I'll meet you in the music.
- [54:33]
C
Yeah.
- [54:33]
A
So powerful and the respect and the Grateful Dead and San Francisco. Great for the city. And just you talk about resilience, community. Just unbelievable. Business acumen too, I think. Very underrated in terms of their business acumen. We'll give away music, we'll make money touring and merch, Right?
- [54:53]
C
Imagine that. Well, I think we've officially alienated any non Grateful Dead members. They've all gone.
- [55:00]
A
It's the end of the show. Maybe some of our listeners are still listening, but. Well, Daniel, such a pleasure, right?
- [55:08]
C
It's fun, fun, fun. Jamming it out with you, Jason. Super fun.
- [55:11]
A
Thank you so much.
- [55:12]
C
Hey, all the best.
- [55:15]
B
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